CHAPTER 256 – HARNESS METEORITE
What he needed to do swirled in Tom’s mind.
He could see the stress on Everlyn’s face as she struggled to suppress the noise of his spinning meteorites. He visualised the actions he was about to complete. The process was simple, get into position and then fire.
Still unaware of what he was trying to kill he took two steps to reach the crack that broke off at right angles from his current ravine and then looked down it. The geography was as she had described it. A steady downward slope without anything obscuring his line of sight. There were no trees to get in the way or up thrusts of rock, just a gentle sloping ground devoid of obstacles. Below him was a courtyard the size of a community swimming pool. Twenty metres wide and fifty metres long and filled with grey lizards with too many legs obscuring what he thought was a consistent yellow stone.
The monsters individually may not have looked like much, especially lying there, sun baking, but there were a lot of them. They were everywhere that the natural light from the orange sky reached the ground. Corgi sized with long tails each ending in a barb like an arrowhead and mouths filled with sharp teeth. They lacked sufficient sunny area to spread, which meant they were all tangled up and sometimes stacked in piles four lizards high. The numbers were intimidating.
The instant he appeared, most of the heads shifted to look at him and some of them even seemed to react instantly as they moved to charge him.
Five meteorites meant he could carpet bomb the entire exposed space. He unleashed them one after the other, with the first released targeting the furthest edge of the courtyard and then getting closer to him.
The balls of stone hurtled away from him. As they went, they grew and heated up, transforming into the deadly force of nature that they were.
The lizards were reacting. Within a second, there were probably a thousand plus eyes focused on him.
It was terrifying.
Half a second after and they were coming for him. The meteorites were slow in a prepared battle situation, but with them effectively released even before being spotted they were quick enough.
Most of the monsters were too tangled to move in the couple of seconds of leeway the slow meteorite speed created. A determined few freed themselves and started toward him but they were in the minority. Their legs on either side of their body churning quickly so they shot forward uncaring on who amongst their friend they stepped on.
It was too late.
The red-hot rocks, now over two metres across slammed down upon the nesting ground.
Tom held his position.
There was a roar. The steep walls funnelled the sound toward him and it was deafening. It sounded like multiple bombs going off or those occasions he had fought ten tonne plus high ranked monsters that would charge you and sometimes right into a solid cliff. Noise that you felt in the pit of your stomach and made you think you were grinding your teeth even if you weren’t. That was what struck, and then a second later, the blast wave reached him. A discharge of hot air almost sufficient to knock him over, smashed into him.
Crack.
He stumbled slightly but did not fall and then looked down at the battlefield.
Excluding the single lizard that Everlyn had struck, all the rest had been caught by the meteorites. That smooth expanse of stone that had been covered by living animals was transformed. There were visible craters, smouldering bodies, and mangled flesh and bones. A landscape that contained nothing close to a whole corpse or even a chunk that resembled the original lizard. They were too squished, crushed, and torn apart to tell what species they had been.
There was movement below him.
Drifting smoke and dancing flames, the pooling of molten rock… but, the corpses… none of them moved. Only that single one had left the impact zone and given how close it was, it might have been a sentry.
What would it have been like to fight a thousand rank sixteen monsters simultaneously? Tom suspected even with his dodging he might not have been able to survive those sorts of odds.
“Over kill.” Everlyn said with a grin. “Lets keep moving.”
They were experienced enough to know that loud noises in this zone did not cause monsters to swarm like what happened in Existentia proper. It was clearly one of the unspoken rules that creatures did not leave their specified location for any provocation, at least the dangerous boss ranked ones. They continued to follow her along the twisting passages. His golem worked as hoped. It kept up with them and when they were attacked, it acted as a very effective off tank. If anything got past Tom, it would leap into action. At one point when they got unexpectedly flanked, it converted a two wide and five meter long trench into a quicksand type of rock that trapped seven mammalian spiders in the briefly soft ground.
It did not hold them for more than a few heartbeats, but it was sufficient for the rest of them to react and to wrestle away the advantage of the surprise from the enemy.
Everlyn appeared next to him. “We need another meteorite shower?”
“This is what the fourth?”
She shrugged unconcerned. “Easy experience for you.”
This time, the target was a single creature that was the size of a blue whale. “It doesn’t have legs.” Tom said in disbelief.
She nodded and smirked. “Good to see you showing your keen observation skills as always.”
“Just because you’re a freak doesn’t mean…”
“Tom! Even if I have a ridiculous number of class skill points invested in a passive identification that is not a nice way to talk to anyone. Even if you’re joking.”
“Sorry.”
“But it’s weird. It doesn’t possess a muscle equivalent. Without magic, it wouldn’t be able to move.”
“How does that work?”
She laughed. “Magically.”
“Very funny.”
“I was not trying to be amusing just accurate.”
“As I said you’re hilarious. I meant how could something like that evolve naturally?”
She shrugged. “Different universe, obviously. Most monsters here appear to come from places with similar rules to ours, but we shouldn’t be surprised to find out that isn’t always the case. Maybe in the world that this creature came from there was only magic.”
“Do I go all out like usual?”
She pulled out a memory crystal and studied it. “Two should be sufficient to kill it.”
Two meteorites hurtled towards the monster. It exploded under the impact of the first, completely disintegrated under the force of the hurtling rocks.
“I guess one was enough.”
Tom pictured the tile in his memory. He didn’t need a crystal like Everlyn to do this. He compared the diagrams from his memory to the creature he had just killed. “Evie? That was a proper boss wasn’t it. Not a mini one, but a full on run away from version.”
“Yes…”
“Then how did it die so easily?”
She shook her head and then hit his shoulder. “Come on… don’t be so surprised. Most teams at rank sixteen don’t have access to spell with the destructive potential of your meteorite. That thing,” she nodded to the half hollowed out blog of bone, muscle and slime that his attack had left. “Had thick skin. Spears, swords, magic. I’m not sure any of that could even get through to hurt it. I think mostly in the trial design, if you see it then you were supposed to run from it. Your meteorite… It’s an exception to the rule.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Tom understood what she was saying. This thing needed a massive first hit to hurt it, but then once it was damaged it was easy enough to kill. Basically if you had the firepower, then the battle was simple. If you lacked the oomph, then there was nothing you could do. It was not a foe you could wear down over time.
They continued on.
Everlyn leading them. Most of the time it was to the flowers, but semi regularly she would guide them done a separate passage to attack a monster type that they had a hard counter against. Sometimes it was an easy fight, but other times it was a slower but still safe battle. One was clearly purely to let Harry’s rituals shine as six of the energy sapping ones knocked out the attacking monsters ridiculously easy. Another time, they were attacked by an intangible enemy. They were the size of a couch with a similar cubic sort of volume. Steel and wood did nothing even when Power Strike was included into the mix, but they disintegrated when Toni’s air blades cut through them. The small air blades caused a nuclear reaction within them that blew them to bits and occasionally killed the monsters next to them.
In the end, they withdrew and just left Toni standing by herself, casting her magic and destroying them.
“What were we fighting?” Michael asked.
Tom consulted his memory. “It was a monster that was marked with a symbol that shows an extreme vulnerability to air.”
“If there are other monsters with similar vulnerabilities, we should be targeting them too.” Michael said. “I mean even if we need to diversify our magic base.”
Everlyn was grinning like a cheshire cat.
Tom once more checked the map and traced their way back. They had passed a monster type that was vulnerable to water magic at the start of the day. “You’re already doing that aren’t you?”
She laughed unable to help herself. “There were some corporal fire bladder monsters that were vulnerable to water.” She flicked her finger and a bullet of water shot out. It smacked into the wall and did no damage. “I figured the spell can be useful for environmental uses as well, so I purchased it. I got five times more experience than I spent for a couple minutes of work.”
“My wisps can do similar.”
“Yes,” she was serious. “But we don’t need to funnel experience to you. There are two more opportunities. One for Keikain and the other for whoever wants to diversify into arcane magic.”
“You know how I’m going to be the third magical damage dealer. Well, there are a couple of good arcane spells I’ve been investigating.” Michael volunteered. “And then hesitated, but maybe arcane is a better match with Harry. I think there’s probably synergy with his rituals.”
“Yes, I’ll fight them.” Harry said, volunteering after only a moment of thought.
“I’m way too eager to put my hands up for things aren’t I?”
“Only the fun ones,” Clare said dryly. “I didn’t see you jumping to be the off tank.”
Michael laughed. “I was happy to let you take that one for the team.”
Clare mock pouted. “Still not Skilled enough yet, but I’ll get there.”
Tom assessed the female healer more carefully. He hadn’t realised that she had decided to take the additional role, but previous conversations and actions made a lot more sense now. She was tougher than he had realised.
Internally, he laughed at himself.
Here he was, admiring someone for taking a more physical role because he had thought she was soft. No one who had made the decisions Clare had could ever be considered weak willed. As for the fighting, everyone who had survived the tutorial could have stepped into the role. Even with his expressed reluctance, Michael would have become the off tank if he was the best choice.
They kept going, often jogging from fight to fight. The orange glow above them started to decrease in intensity.
“I was hoping the light was perpetual,” Everlyn grumped. “We’ll find somewhere to rest in case it gets dark. I’m not happy trying to do this at night.”
A short time later, she led them into a particularly deep ravine. The stone walls soared hundreds of metres up around them and the light from the distant sky barely reached them.
“Bats.” Everlyn told them not bothering to keep her voice down. “And hopefully not asleep.”
She pulled her bow and fired at the entrance. The arrow used was a sickly green colour that he hadn’t seen before. It went into the cave and there was a boom that was larger than a projectile of the size she fired should have made.
She seemed unconcerned. She had nocked another arrow and had it ready, and studied the cave intently. “They’re coming. I can hear them.”
Tom personally couldn’t sense anything, but he prepared himself. There was not much to do. He had his spear out for the start of the fight in case there was a surprise and then he would switch to daggers.
There was the sound of an immense number of flapping wings and the monsters boiled out of the cave. The creatures were tiny. They were the same colour as the sky, and Tom could have cupped each one in his hands. In a moment, any thought of taunting them vanished. It would not work.
They flocked toward them in a wave of bodies that completely obscured the view of everything behind them. There were hundreds of enemies, possibly a thousand, and they were all rank sixteen at least on a speed metric. He sent an instruction to the earth elemental while he could weather this storm they probably could not.
A dull red bolt shot over his shoulder from Michael. It struck the bats and then spread like an infection in moments. The entire left third was stained with the red colour. Then there was a distortion and the red patches ripped their hosts apart. Over a hundred died in the second.
Tom wondered if that was a lucky chaos bolt or one created by fate. Then they were upon him. His first spear thrust went through six bodies. Then he was twisting, ducking, trying to evade them. He avoided the vanguard’s but the main mass was still coming.
The air thrummed with power. It felt like a cyclone was about to erupt and then the space behind him in a circle around the others was obscured as swirling dirt filled mist was spun up by howling winds. His body turned to stone almost all over as the first wave of the bats slammed into him. Their density was too thick to avoid. He took half a step backwards, and the storm snatched at his legs nearly tripping him. He teleported himself away before getting sucked in. The power trapped in the spinning vortex was material.
The bats swirled into the dirty wind and most of them were spat out to the side. Their fur scoured away and most had suffered deep wounds. The bat’s thick, almost oil sludge like blood filling the long gashes. He dematerialised his spear that was useless in this dense mess. The wind behind him was erratic. One gust swept over his head and cleared the sky above, knocking all the bats away.
It gave him a momentary reprieve, at least from that direction. With two knives in his hand, Tom fought in his usual acrobatic style. His dodge skill had him twisting in the air and teleporting to avoid their attacks. Their teeth occasionally reached him but they were only able to land glancing blows that clanged off the stone that he created to protect himself. His mana was dropping but not alarmingly because the amount of fate he had built up around him was immense. It was like he was dancing premeditated steps and thrusting his weapons randomly forward as he did so. Most times he did that he impaled two of the bats and the surrounding monsters were running into each before they would fall twinned together. Then he would step on them with lightning feet, activated to ensure he finished the job. The stamps killed everything he stepped on. They might have possessed rank sixteen speed, but they were incredibly fragile and lacked any dangerous magical attacks.
Tom was impressed by the dust storm that the earth elemental was producing. With it utilising the attack with earth attributed mana, the deadliness of the storm was elevated. Tom wasn’t sure what the mechanism was that made the dust storm so lethal when infused with the correct mana, but he suspected the grains of rock flying through the air became slightly larger and sharper, so did significantly more damage.
He would like to have thought that his continually deadly blades were responsible for the majority of the deaths, but it wouldn’t have been true. All the ranged magic users and the golem won on the kill count calculations.
Against weak fragile monsters area of effect magic, was always going to claim the most kills.
Then the last of them died.
He glanced around to make sure and then touched his neck. Most of the rock that he had initially created the neck band out of was gone and something had changed during the battle. He had felt the pattern slot into place.
“Anyone hurt?” he asked, spinning to check.
“We’re good,” Michael said immediately. “There were a couple of minor injuries, but Clare and I were able to fix them straight away. To be fair, only a few were getting through the dust storm apart from when we had the golem create holes to get our magic out.”
Everlyn led them into the cave the bats had exited.
Tom slowed and wrinkled his nose. Theoretically, the den of an established monster pack that you had defeated was a safe place to camp. But bats… Tom hated exploring caves inhabited by bats. He braced himself as he entered and was surprised that no invasive stench hit him. “Where are the droppings?”
Everlyn shrugged. “Maybe this version poops elsewhere and not where they sleep. Or possibly they have a different biology. Their poo might literally smell like roses. Or maybe the colony was generated when we got close, so we’re not dealing with hundreds of years of entrenched nesting just hours. Personally, I’m not going to question it too closely.”
The initial cave they entered was not where the bats had nested. It was only thirty metres wide and a similar length and no sign of habitation. The flying vermin must have come out of a large fissure at the back of the cave. He immediately investigated it. The hole went down almost vertically for fifty metres before going off at angle. From this position, he couldn’t tell how far it descended.
“Seal it.” Everlyn instructed. There were no arguments from anyone because not one of them was in the mood to explore it.
Harry began to put a ritual down. With his contribution, the fissure did not need to be closed perfectly because Harry’s ritual would warn them if anything small crept up and delay it long enough for them to respond.
Tom paced the area and used Earth Sense to assess everything. It might cause long-term instability so he wasn’t ready to pull the trigger but he could collapse the fissure at the back and almost certainly seal it off if monsters tried to fight their way up. Short term, they placed rituals down and grew thin spears of rock pointing downwards that should stop anything large enough to ignore Harry’s rituals from climbing up. The entrance into the cave from outside needed more work. None of them expected a threat from below and if one came, then Tom would cause a catastrophic collapse and neutralise that threat. The rules were different for the main entrance. While most monsters did not roam, some would be attracted to the dead bats and then could go further for fresh meat. It was prudent to fortify it further.
He sat down with Keikain to narrow the gap by creating small rock collapses every now and again to speed things up. The earth mage threw him an annoyed look but dutifully fused together the pile of loose rocks to construct a solid wall.
“A good first day.” Everlyn said cheerfully. “We have thirty-one flowers and it should only take us three hours tomorrow to collect the remainders and reach our exit.”
“A day and a half.” Michael mused. “I know we flagged this as the easiest challenge, but that gives me hope that we’ll be able to save your healers.”
Tom said nothing and instead flexed his hand. The blue stone moved effortlessly. He really wanted to see what it did and explore the other stones in his inventory.